These Are Considered Acceptable Things to Say About Fat People

[Content Note: Fat hatred; body policing; shaming; health concern trolling; disordered eating.]

I read a lot of rank fat hatred every day, whether it's in my inbox or a published article in the media. And so it's really saying something when I note that this is one of the most vicious pieces of vile fat hatred that I have ever read.

The piece is titled: "Why are today's young women so unashamed about being fat? Horrified by the rolls of flesh she's witnessed on show this summer, LINDA KELSEY takes no prisoners."

The author, Linda Kelsey, is a thin white woman who proclaims: "I am unapologetically fattist." And although she does an extraordinary amount of remote diagnosis, asserting that all fat people are unhealthy, she is honest enough to also admit she's straight-up hostile toward fat people because "it's unattractive."

She spends an enormous (see what I did there?) amount of time detailing all the young women who have offended her delicate aesthetic sensibilities by forcing her to view their fat flesh with revealing clothing, and, even worse, with their disgusting attitudes that seem to suggest they think they have some kind of right to be fat in public. OH THE HORROR.

I could spend the next twelve hours of my life deconstructing every single thing wrong with this contemptible heap of bigtory, but: 1. Fuck giving this haughty shitlord that much of my energy; and 2. I've already spent a lot of time writing refutations to the onslaught of mendacious, judgmental, indecent garbage that Kelsey peddles here as if they're new ideas and she's the fucking Magellan of edgy, radical fat-hatred.

I will, however, note with no small amount of irony the final line of her piece, which she clearly believes is a devastating blow: "One way to start [tackling fat for the problem that it is] might be by calling a fat girl a fat girl. No apology required."

I've got news for you, Kelsey: I am a fat girl who calls myself a fat girl. No apology required. And, let's be honest, you and I: That's exactly the source of your ire—that you're losing the capacity to use "fat" as an insult anymore, against these uppity fat girls who refuse to be ashamed of our bodies.

Who think we aren't less than you, just because you're thin.

Whoooooooops. Looks like with that thin privilege eroding, you might have to resort to being a decent person. Good luck.

[H/T to Shaker IndyM.]